Wishing all you dads out there a wonderful Father’s Day! Among the many virtues of this day is the opportunity I get to post this great pic once again. It’s Timothy, his wife Doris and their six young’uns, from the early 1970s. It accompanied the article “Timothy Carey: The World’s Greatest Director!” by Harvey F. Chartrand in Filmfax Plus magazine #102 (April/June 2004).
Happy day, dads, fathers and father figures!
Carey’s final project as a film director is Godfarter III (1989), an audition piece for [Francis Ford] Coppola, who was looking to cast the role of an elderly Mafia don for The Godfather: Part III (1990). Coppola considered Carey too young for the part (and may also have been put off by Carey’s earlier eccentricities on The Godfather). Carey tried to convince the director that he could tackle the role of Don Altobello, but it wasn’t meant to be, and Eli Wallach was eventually cast in the part.
– Harvey F. Chartrand, “Timothy Carey, The World’s Greatest Director!”; Filmfax Plus #102 (April/June 2004)
FAX: Is a cult forming around Timothy Carey?
CAREY: Oh yes, there is no doubt about that. I get e-mail from around the world from people who are just now discovering him. My dad was always pretty famous. As kids, we couldn’t go anywhere with him that he wouldn’t be recognized. He is remembered because he was a great actor who appeared in some landmark films, like Paths of Glory and The Killing. He made his own films, which influenced other independent filmmakers. It all comes down to originality. Someone as iconoclastic as my father resonates down the generations. It’s a mystery why he is becoming more popular since his death, but I think there’s a whole pirated underground of [The World’s Greatest] Sinner tapes out there. There are regular screenings of Sinner in Brooklyn that attract a thousand people per screening. There are Tim Carey film festivals in Chicago, San Francisco, even Australia! For a guy who did what he did in his little way, it’s pretty impressive. It just goes to show, if you put the right kind of energy into something, it doesn’t go away.
– Romeo Carey, “Carrying On in the Family Tradition”, interview by Harvey F. Chartrand; Filmfax Plus #102 (April/June 2004)
Happy Father’s Day!
Today, the fifteenth anniversary of the death of Stanley Kubrick, we pay tribute to him by revisiting the two films of his in which Timothy appears. First up is The Killing (1956), in which hipster sharpshooter Nikki Arcane assassinates a racehorse as part of an intricate racetrack robbery scheme.
Secondly, and finally, doomed French World War I soldier Pvt. Maurice Ferol is unjustly court-martialed for desertion in Paths of Glory (1957).
In an unpublished 2003 interview with Harvey Chartrand, Tim’s younger brother George sheds an interesting light on Tim’s relationship with Kubrick:
One day, Timmy was out in the backyard, brushing his horse, and I got a call from Stanley Kubrick, who was on the set of Spartacus. Timmy says, “You talk to him, George. Tell him I’ll be right there.” So I made small talk with Kubrick, figuring that Timmy was on his way from the backyard to take the phone call. I don’t know what the call was about, because Timmy wasn’t in Spartacus. Well, Timmy never got to the phone. He stayed out there, brushing his horse. I don’t know what that was all about. Timmy was a little erratic at times. I think if Timmy hadn’t been quite so extreme in some of his efforts to get publicity for himself, he would have been in other Kubrick pictures after Paths of Glory. (Carey was later considered for a small part in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
We can only dream about the work Tim and Kubrick might have accomplished together in later years, and about further Kubrick projects had he lived longer to share his gifts with us. For now, let’s just be grateful these two eccentric storytelling geniuses got a chance to work together at all. We are the fortunate beneficiaries of their collaborations.
Wishing all you dads out there a wonderful Father’s Day! Among the many virtues of this day is the opportunity I get to post this great pic once again. It’s Timothy, his wife Doris and their six young’uns, from the early 1970s. It accompanied the article “Timothy Carey: The World’s Greatest Director!” by Harvey F. Chartrand in Filmfax Plus magazine #102 (April/June 2004).
Have a great day, dads!
“My personal opinion is that [The World’s Greatest] Sinner is very unusual,” [Gil] Barreto observes. “Nobody else but Tim would have dared to make a movie like that. Very controversial, especially when Tim pierces the host (to make God cry out in pain and reveal Himself). Tim’s acting was good, but it was very strange.”
Carey changed during the filming, Barreto reports, truly becoming the character he was portraying. Clarence Hilliard starts out sweet and loving and becomes a wicked man. Barreto recalls, “At first, I only had a few lines, but Tim was so nasty to the bit players that they started quitting the picture. As they disappeared, Tim kept giving me their lines, until I had a big supporting role. Tim became God Hilliard, and we really had God in person on the set. It was very difficult to be with Tim at times.”
Nothing would deflect Carey from bringing his vision to the screen. The result is there for all to see: a crazed B-movie, insane, disturbing, and provocative, fueled by rage and passion.
– Harvey F. Chartrand, “Timothy Carey: The World’s Greatest Director!”, Filmfax Plus magazine #102 (April/June 2004)
Timothy gives the business to Larry D. Mann (the voice of Yukon Cornelius!) in “Set Up City” (10.29.75)Timmy always seemed to have a project going, but I guess that’s par for the course with creative personalities. I don’t recall the origins of The World’s Greatest Sinner. He wanted to combine religion and politics in a film and do something a little different about a self-made type of person who becomes a big celebrity. He had a production book. I wonder if it’s still around. It explains the plot in quite a lot of detail.
The World’s Greatest Sinner was 20 years ahead of its time. The religious aspect upset the studio heads. People who could have advanced the film were anxious, because they thought the public would condemn it as blasphemous, although I don’t think The World’s Greatest Sinner is irreligious, compared to films today. The character of Clarence Hilliard is redeemed in the end. And Timmy had such a shoestring budget to work with… that didn’t help.
Most of the film was shot in El Monte, California, where Timmy lived. One very amusing scene had Timmy standing on a pile of fertilizer as he was campaigning. He had a big guitar in his hand and he was running for office, talking to the crowds, making a political speech. And the camera pans down and we see that Timmy is standing on a great big pile of cow manure. (laughs) I thought that was a funny touch. That was very good!
I remember that day. Timmy was positioning all the people. They were just local people who were acting in the scene. Timmy had a few professional actors working on the picture with him, like the guy who played his campaign manager (James Farley) and Gil Barreto (who played Clarence’s disciple). I don’t think anybody other than Timmy had any significant credits, though. The World’s Greatest Sinner was all improvised. I don’t remember Timmy ever working from a script.
I went to a few screenings of The World’s Greatest Sinner. I saw the film in Manhattan. Timmy brought it to New York and showed it in several screening rooms, trying to get some film companies interested. But they were all turned off and scared by the religious aspect. But The World’s Greatest Sinner does conclude with a miracle, a church scene where Clarence Hilliard begs forgiveness. He has remorse for the type of person he was and seeks redemption. The problem was with the blasphemous stuff that came before. Not too many people could handle that. It was too ahead of its time.
Carey’s final project as a film director is Godfarter III (1989), an audition piece for Coppola, who was looking to cast the role of an elderly Mafia don for The Godfather: Part III (1990). Coppola considered Carey too young for the part (and may also have been put off by Carey’s earlier eccentricities on The Godfather). Carey tried to convince the director that he could tackle the role of Don Altobello, but it wasn’t meant to be, and Eli Wallach was eventually cast in the part.
Godfarter III consists mostly of scenes taken directly from the original script by Coppola and Mario Puzo. Romeo Carey recalls, “It was basically a screen test, but you also get to see behind-the-scenes of the making of the screen test and how my father worked with actors. I shot the screen test. I got a call from my father. He said, ‘Bring your camera tomorrow morning, I am going to shoot a screen test for Francis.’ I showed up at his studio the next day with my camera and lights. In a single day, he put the project together, complete with the use of the Hilton Hotel, a limo, props, ten bodyguards in suits for his entrance, and his acting friend Robert Miano. My dad’s intention was to prove to Francis that he could play an 80-year-old Don. (Carey was then 60.) We powdered his face white and sprayed his hair white. In the end, my dad was happy with the screen test and felt satisfied. I shot what he told me to shoot and then I edited the footage for him, and he sent it to Francis. Francis liked it a lot and was interested in my father for the part, but Dad suffered another massive stroke a few days after the shoot.”
– Harvey F. Chartrand, “Timothy Carey: The World’s Greatest Director!”, FilmFax Plus, April/June 2004, No. 102
Godfarter III is available for purchase from Absolute Films
In a letter to Carey (dated January 22, 1994), Ray Carney, a professor of film and American studies at Boston University, wrote:
“Re: The Insect Trainer script–What an extraordinary, weird, wonderful, bizarrely unclassifiable work you’ve created. In the Joycean, Swiftian, Salvador Dalian vein, you violate all of the taboos, cross all of the boundaries, break all of the rules, and–ecstatically–take us to places almost never even dreamt of in drama before. The script is a ‘gas’ in the other sense of the word: It’s hilarious–as well as humanly touching and moving. It’s a celebration of eccentric, non-homogenized, non-normalized humanity. An expression of love for the lost and forgotten feelings and impulses of life. A recognition of some of the sadness and loneliness of all originals, pioneers, inventors. In short, you break up the mental and spiritual constipation that afflicts both art and life. You free the spirit. The laughter and thoughtfulness you provoke, if we let ourselves be affected by them, shake us out of our zombie-like trances of conformity. This is an awesome piece of work. Bravo. Bravissimo!”
Prof. Carney’s letter is a fitting epitaph to the amazing talent and spirit of Timothy Carey.
— Harvey F. Chartrand, “Timothy Carey: The World’s Greatest Director!”, Filmfax Plus magazine #102 (April/June 2004)
The Timothy Carey Experience 